FARIBAULT COUNTY. 467 



Water powers. Bricks.] 



bluish or brownish, soft mud, of fetid smell, 1 to 6 feet thick; and from this there is a change in 

 two to five feet to the dark, very hard till called " hardpan," which is the hardest, most compact 

 and most rocky of these tills. 



Verona. John G. Pace; sec. 24: well, 44 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, 15; blue till, 16; gravel, sand 

 and clay, 11; water rose ten feet. 



Alex Ilalliday; at Verona Star mills; sec. 24: well, 45 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, 8; much harder 

 dark till, 35; water rose nine feet from sand at the bottom. 



Pilot Grove. Dr. G. D. Winch estate; sec. 8: well, 100 feet ; soil, 2 feet; yellow till, about 

 5 feet; all below was blue till, about 93 feet, with few sand layers; at the bottom was sand, from 

 which water rose ninety feet. 



Pitt Wilson; S. W. J of sec. 20: well, 70 feet; soil, 2; yellow till, 18; harder blue till, 60; water 

 rose from quicksand at the bottom, and after one and a half hours flowed from the top of the well. 



MATERIAL RESOURCES. 



Agriculture must always continue the leading industry, as it unfolds 

 the most valuable natural resources of this county. We have here to speak 

 briefly of its water-powers, brick-making, peat, and artesian fountains. 



Water-powers. Five water-powers are used in Faribault county, all situated on the Blue 

 Earth river and employed by flouring mills, in descending order as follows: 



Blue Earth City mills; N. Dustin & Co.; just below the junction of the east and west 

 branches of the river, in the west part of sec. 8, Blue Earth City; head, about nine feet. 



Verona Star mills; Alex Ilalliday; at the west line of sec. 24, Verona; head, eight feet. 



Rising Sun mills; at the bridge in the S. W. } of sec. 11, Verona; head, eight feet. 



Banner mills; C. II. Payne & Son; at the bridge in sec. 33, Winnebago City, one and a half 

 miles west from the town; head, nine feet. 



Woodland mills; Dorsey Brothers; sec. 3, Winnebago City; head, about eight feet. 



Bricks. Brick-making was begun at Blue Earth City in 1867, and was carried on nine 

 years; but nothing was done in this work here in the years 1876 to 1879. This yard, owned by 

 S. P. Childs, was leased in 1880 to Christian Severson, who expected that season to make 600,000 

 bricks, selling them at $8 per M. The mixed wood used for the kilns formerly cost $5 per cord, 

 but is now furnished by the railroad at $3J to $4. The bricks made here are red, of good quality, 

 tempered by intermixture of one-sixth as much sand as clay. The excavation is in the south or 

 right bank of the West branch of the Blue Earth river, about a quarter of a mile southwest from 

 its junction with the East branch. The clay has a thickness of 25 to 35 feet, and at a few feet 

 above the river is underlain by sand. The upper four to six feet of this clay are obscurely strati- 

 fled. Its next ten feet are divided, similarly with the clay-beds at Carver and Jordan in the valley 

 of the Minnesota river, into layers of light grayish color, composed of clayey and sandy fine silt, 

 changing above and below to a nearly black, more unctnous and finer clay, which forms the part- 

 ings between them. In the east part of this excavation the thickness of these layers is from a 

 half inch to one inch, but within three rods to the west they are from one to six inches thick, 

 being thinnest at the top. They are somewhat contorted or wavy, but in their whole extent are 

 nearly level. The alternating conditions which produced these successive layers are believed to 

 have been the yearly changes of the seasons, the principal mass of each layer being the deposition 

 of the annually recurring periods of high water, and the darker partings being the sediment of a 

 current of reduced volume and therefore slower and less turbid. The lower eight or ten feet of 

 this clay are finely and obliquely laminated and very sandy. A well, 38 feet deep, at the top 

 of this bank, even in bight with the brick-yard, finds the clay gradually become more sandy, and 

 its last four feet are in clear sand, containing water at nearly the same level as the river. 



In section 11, Verona, at the Rising Sun mills, a kiln of 130,000 red bricks was made by 

 Westbrook & Ferguson in 1879, not with satisfactory success because of particles of limestone 

 contained in the clay and .sand, which after burning become slacked and crack the bricks. The 

 clay used here is yellow, imperfectly stratified, apparently a part of the till, occurring in the 

 northeast bluff at 15 to 30 fpet above the river. The proportions of clay and sand mixed for these 



